An illustrated catalogue of Rudolf Sturany’s type specimens in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria (NHMW): deep-sea Eastern Mediterranean molluscs

Abstract

The “Pola” expeditions were the first to explore the deep Eastern Mediterranean Sea in the 1890s. They remained the most intense surveys in that area for a century and constitute today a fundamental baseline to assess change in the basin, whose fauna is still inadequately described. Solid taxonomic foundations for the study of deep-sea organisms are needed and we here contribute by revising the name-bearing types of mollusc species introduced by Rudolf Sturany on the basis of the “Pola” material from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea stored in the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Sturany introduced 15 names (Marginella occulta var. minor Sturany, 1896 shall not be considered as the introduction of a new name). He described and established two manuscript names by Monterosato: Jujubinus igneus and Pseudomurex ruderatus. The genus Isorropodon was also introduced together with its type species I. perplexum. For each name, we list the available type material, provide the original description and a translation into English and illustrate the specimens in colour and with SEM imaging.

An annotated catalogue of selected historical type specimens, including genetic data, housed in the Natural History Museum Vienna

“…At the same time, through online databases or other shared resources (Lendemer et al 2020;Monfils et al 2022;Hardisty et al 2023), digitisation makes museum collections more accessible to the wider scientific community and to researchers from disadvantaged or distant countries who may not have the opportunity to see the specimen in person (open science concept). The Extended Specimen Approach (ESA; Webster 2017; Lendemer et al 2020) is a method of digitisation that goes beyond the physical specimen, e.g., photographs, X-rays, CT scans (Stoev et al 2013;Akkari et al 2015Akkari et al , 2018, but also includes all its attributes, such as historical information stored in the collection in the form of acquisition and inventory books, inventory cards and labels (Haston et al 2012;Albano et al 2018;Price et al 2018;Zahiri et al 2021;Bogutskaya et al 2022;Takano et al 2024).…”

“…1) and a museum-wide database covering all NHMW collections is being developed, but none of the collections are yet available online. Thus, the holdings of the museum have been reviewed in a series of 20 volumes of Catalogues of the scientific collections of the Natural History Museum Vienna (Kataloge der wissenschaftlichen Sammlungen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien) published 1978-2007, and are regularly presented in illustrated and annotated catalogues of different taxonomic groups (e.g., Wirkner et al 2002;Schileyko and Stagl 2004;Stagl and Stoev 2005;Stagl and Zapparoli 2006;Schifter et al 2007;Ilie et al 2009;Zettel et al 2022Zettel et al , 2023van den Elzen et al 2023), by collectors or authors (e.g., Albano et al 2018), or only type specimens by taxa or/ and authors (e.g., Saint Quentin 1970;Schifter 1991;Gemel et al 2019).…”

An illustrated catalogue of Rudolf Sturany’s type specimens in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria (NHMW): more Red Sea species

“…In a series of illustrated catalogues, we revised the type material of the marine species described by Rudolf Sturany, curator of the molluscan collection at the Natural History Museum in Vienna between 1889 and 1922 (Albano et al 2017(Albano et al , 2018(Albano et al , 2019. Sturany worked on samples collected during the "Pola" expeditions to the Mediterranean and Red Sea (Schefbeck 1996;Stagl 2012) introducing 15 names for the eastern Mediterranean Sea and 56 from the Red Sea.…”